I am no longer a stock broker, but I am still part of the financial world as a professional tax preparer. Since this is my busy season and the Lord has been blessing me with an unusually large group of new clients (with complicated tax situations) early in the season, I am relying on two guest contributors to flesh out my postings. But I will still be the one who ties them together.

Having been a stock broker for 20 years, I heard many of the stories and sayings of Wall Street. One of those stories is about a man who had recently attained considerable wealth. He went to Wall Street to meet with the most prestigious financial planners to choose which one would manage his wealth. At one of these meetings, held high above the city’s financial district, the planner brought the wealthy man to one of the large windows in the conference room overlooking the river. Thinking it would impress his prospective client, he made a grand gesture towards certain boats on the water’s edge and said, “Those are the brokers’ yachts!”

The wealthy man had a different idea of what was important. “Where are the investors’ yachts?” he wanted to know.

The two stories I am sharing look at two major ways that transgender people are attacked in the United States (and in many parts of the world). The first talks about physical attacks of violence that injure, disfigure and sometimes murder the victim. The hateful perpetrators of this violence use fists, blunt objects, knives, guns, and a variety of other methods to carry out their attacks.

The second story talks about legislative acts of violence that makes it easier for perpetrators of physical violence to target transgender people. They might even encourage them. These laws are proposed (and now passed in South Dakota) in the name of Christian morality and defense of straw man victims. Sadly, this puts Christianity in a bad light, putting a selfish interest (prejudice) ahead of concern for the wellbeing of innocent people who are put into clear and present danger on a regular and ongoing basis.

Both stories from a lofty perspective point out some of the victims of violence against transgender people. Like the prospective client in our Wall Street tale, we wonder, where are the victims of violence done by transgender people? Indeed, where are victims of violence done by people pretending to be transgender?

Summary of the first story: For Jacie Leopold, a trans woman in the latter stages of physical transition, the night of her company’s Christmas party in 2014 was the night that the lights went out in Arkansas. Since then, a phalanx of backwoods Southern judges, lawyers and police officers have denied her justice. She has no job and no car, but the medical bills don’t go away.

With thinly veiled irony, Charlize Veritas, a trans woman and the author of the following Huff Post piece, comments that Jacie is “very lucky”. This sort of thing still happens all too frequently, and sometimes it leads to the victim’s death. Even so, there is a loud chorus of voices blaming the victim.

Summary of the second story: Before I talk about the story, I will say a few words about the author. Among Brynn Tannehill’s many accomplishments, she graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and then earned a master’s degree in operations research from the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology; served her country as a Naval Officer for nearly 17 years, much of that time as a pilot, flying over 450 combat missions and over 700 hours on non-combat missions; has continued to serve her country as a senior defense analyst and technical scientist for private firms; came out as a trans woman; writes brilliant articles highlighting transgender issues in our society of who we are and what we face.

The title of her article plays on Protestant Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous quote that succinctly describes how failure to defend others from unfair attack led to Adolf Hitler’s rise to absolute power in Nazi Germany where no German citizen could stand against him and be safe. Brynn brings to light a systematic plan advanced by the Family Research Council that targets members of the transgender community to make us less than second class citizens. As a backlash against the recent advances that help us to live as freely as any other citizen enjoys, it would eventually lead to such a hostile environment that would either force us into the dark underbelly of society or keep us cowering in the closet.

(Brynn knows something about music, too. Just as I alluded to Vicki Lawrence’s “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia”, she quotes a phrase from Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer”.)

Brynn also gives special attention to the targeting of transgender children at the forefront of this attack strategy. If there is any group that highlights the innocence of transgender identity, it is these precious and courageous children who are daring to step out at a time of life when most of us feared to tread. The FRC and others who support this plan know that these children are the most vulnerable part of the transgender community. If they can effectively drive this generation of transgender children back underground, who knows how many generations it will be before the transgender community can once again emerge from the Dark Ages.

I need not rewrite Brynn’s article for her. She does a magnificent job on her own:

As a Christian, I am deeply saddened by the central role played by the Family Research Council in attacking the transgender community. I can remember many articles of sound advice from their organization, mostly from the pen of Dr. James Dobson. (I make no claims as to whether it would be different if Dobson were still at the helm of this ministry.) It’s almost like another close Christian friend turned against me, as some did when I came out.

But there is also good news tonight. I have one more link to share. But rather than a story (I said that there were only two), this is a report about a research study out of the University of Washington that was released Friday (2/26). The study suggests that parental support is a major factor in the success of a child’s transition. In other words, it is not the gender issue that leads to problems; it is the lack of support.

The researchers honestly admit that more studies are needed to test for other reasons for the findings. But while their methodology was somewhat different, the study’s finding are consistent with an Ontario study of a few years ago with a much larger data base of trans youth age 16-24. I referred to this study in my blog post of 1/6/16, “A Dream Deferred … or Worse”.

As these findings mount, they are poking huge holes in the failed arguments of doctors like Paul McHugh who base their beliefs on their own prejudices, biased studies of their own commission and disingenuous reporting of other studies which arrived at vastly different conclusions (while failing to acknowledge those conclusions). Hopefully these accurate studies are coffin nails that can finally put these failed beliefs to rest and bury them where they belong.

Meanwhile, those Christians (and others who take their authority from scripture) who lie about transgender people would do well to consider the Old Testament penalty for falsely accusing someone. It is the negative counterpart to the New Testament teaching that with the measure by which you forgive, so shall you be forgiven.

If a false witness rise up against any man to testify against him that which is wrong; Then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges, which shall be in those days; And the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother; Then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother: so shalt thou put the evil away from among you. – Deuteronomy 19:16-19

What’s going on here? Recently, a group of transwomen temporarily took over the U.S. Conference on AIDS to shout “We are not gay men!” As a transwoman who admittedly did not attend that event, here is my explanation.

In my county, we have a monthly meeting known as the Transgender Roundtable, sponsored by an organization known as VCS. It has been discussed at these meetings in recent months that in a number of ways, the “T” is being viewed and treated separately from the “LGB”. The interest level is much higher when articles on transgender are posted on VCS’s Facebook page. Trainings advertised as being for LGBT issues are tending to become mostly focused on the T issues. Indeed, the training for transgender issues needs to be different because transgender identity is different from LGB orientations.

We are regularly telling the cisgender world that transgender is gender identity and it is not sexual preference or orientation. Lesbian, gay and bisexual on the other hand all describe sexual preference or orientation. And yet we wonder why so many in the straight, cisgender world do not seem to catch on. Does regular exposure to the phrase “LGBT community” contribute to the lack of understanding?

I certainly do not want to make a mountain out of a molehill. But within the transgender community (which does fit the definition of community), we are always talking about language and nomenclature. We stress the importance of PGP’s and discuss whether it should stand for “personal gender pronouns” or “preferred gender pronouns”. We discuss the use of transsexual versus transgender, the shades of meaning between gender fluid, gender non-binary, gender non-conforming, gender creative, gender queer and agender. Someone is no longer said to be “passing”; the preferred term now is “blending”. The term “sex reassignment surgery” is passé in favor of terms such as “gender reassignment surgery”, or “gender confirming surgery”. I have been part of discussions about the usage of “marginalized” versus “minoritized” and still others prefer to use “oppressed”. And these are just some of the examples as we endeavor to develop accurate terminology, whether for use by the general public or for personal communications with members of the transgender community.

The general purpose of language is to communicate. The more accurate the word usage, the better the communication. People in marginalized, minoritized or oppressed groups are particularly sensitive to misuse of words to describe their group or members of their group. And so we should be here.

I am going to provide the primary definition of “community” and two words that I have considered as possible more accurate alternatives. Definitions have been taken from an online dictionary.

Community:

a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.

a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.

Alliance:

a union or association formed for mutual benefit, especially between countries or organizations.

a relationship based on an affinity in interests, nature, or qualities.

a state of being joined or associated.

Coalition:

an alliance for combined action, especially a temporary alliance of political parties forming a government or of states.

We can see that alliance and coalition are similar. But a coalition is a particular kind of alliance, one designed for combined action. It also is more likely to be temporary. “Coalition” pinpoints the nature of the LGBT relationship better than the more general “alliance”.

Furthermore, when we look at “community”, definition 1 doesn’t apply. There is neither a common location nor sharing of a particular characteristic. What about definition 2? A feeling of fellowship? Not necessarily. Common attitudes and interests don’t apply, either. The only thing that applies is common goals: in general, civil rights and social justice of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender individuals. But even here, the particulars aren’t always the same. Bathroom bills don’t apply to cisgender people, even if they are L, G or B. And the concept of same sex marriage becomes much more complicated in transgender lives. Besides, difficult marriage issues faced by the transgender population are almost always with cisgenders, not other people of transgender identity.

I haven’t forgotten about the takeover of the U.S. Conference on AIDS. The transwomen who demonstrated were a group of #TransLivesMatter activists. Bamby Salcedo, the group leader and spokesperson explained that for at least ten years, the transgender community has been recommending that HIV positive data be collected specific to the transgender community. But after initial indications that the transgender community would be given consideration, the Federal Government’s ambitious new plans to combat the HIV epidemic lumps transgender women in with men who have sex with men (MSM).

Thus the protest and the chant: “We are not gay men.” And we aren’t. It is bad enough to be marginalized in society. But we are also still marginalized within a marginalized group.

It is similar to how I feel when I click on the link to a transgender article in Huffington Post and end up in the Gay Voices section. From what I have seen, cisgender gay men generally do not want to be called transgender; cisgender lesbian women generally do not want to be called transgender. I take no offense at that. And I do not want to be considered a gay male. If I was a gay male, I would have come out as gay and not gone through all the time and expense of counseling, hormones, name and gender marker change, hair removal, new wardrobe and so on.

So at this point, I will start referring to the LGBT Coalition. LGBT Community is dropped from my vocabulary.

Any comments? Any who will do the same? What else can we do so the general public understands how T is different from the LGB without losing the political coalition’s efforts on behalf of mutual social justice needs?

And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment: For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole. But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour. – Matthew 9:20-22
God bless,